Trick or Treat!

One of the pleasures of living in a village like Whittlesford is the fact that it is a community in all sorts of different ways.

Lots of youngsters from tots to teenagers called this evening, parents in tow with torches keeping an eye on things, so the whole place had groups of ghosties, monsters and zombies going around. On a misty dark night with all the trees rustling in the wind Whittlesford can look both spooky and even a bit exciting! The kids were in some pretty scary masks and things, but were polite and wished us a "Happy Halloween!"

Decent bus service? Local post office? Fight to keep them!

South Cambridgeshire faces one threat after another another from people who want to cut our services, damaging both our way of life and the planet. Everyone is telling us to look after the environment, be greener, and reduce carbon emissions. But at the same time, cutting or reducing services forces villagers into their cars, or takes away links to the outside world.

This week people in Heathfield who depend on the C7 bus linking them to Sawston and Cambridge face the prospect of a cut in the service to one bus an hour. This is because the County Council is now consulting on reducing the service from half an hour to an hour. The service is already a poor one, with delays and long waits while the bus goes in a huge one-way loop.

At the same time Thriplow Parish Council is fighting to save its Post Office. We spent an evening last week presenting the evidence for keeping the Post Office to PO managers who have been ordered to cull a percentage of local post offices by the government. In the summer we were all out along the A505 demonstrating what the huge Hanley Grange "eco-con" would do to our roads and local infrastructure. It goes on and on.

I am vice-chair of South Cambs District Council Climate Change Working Group, and we want to work with villages and parish councils to find ways of supporting local schemes reducing green house gases and energy consumption. But all our efforts will be neutralised by these constant reductions in basic services, that force people out of their villages and onto the roads to do the most basic of things, like posting a parcel or going shopping. For people who can't drive, or don't have access to a car perhaps because their partner needs it to get to work, all these proposed cuts reduce access to the outside world.

Presenting Thriplow's case to the Post Office

This evening we met with Post Office Counters managers who make the final call on the future of the sub-post office at Thriplow. This was the performance for which Monday night had been the rehearsal.

A team of people put forward well-presented arguments. The team was drawn mainly from the Parish Council and those people involved in the village shop, with Andrew Lansley, our MP, summing up at the end. The Post Office people asked questions, pressed for data and facts, and set out their task.

For us there is still the need to encourage people to write letters, to be done in the next two weeks, but our case was cogent and well-researched, determined and passionate, and it was our best shot.

Don't RIP the heart out of ThRIPlow - campaign to save the Post Office

Just back from a planning session with the team of people in Thriplow working to put together the material that will be presented at a meeting with Post Office Counters managers this Thursday. The presentations include information on:

• analysis of the flaws in the data on which PO Counters made the decision to propose closure;
• the demographics of the village, such as its high OAP numbers;
• public transport paucity
  
• the dependency of the village shop (which sells excellent croissants!) on the income stream generated by the PO;
• there are so many businesses in Thriplow run from homes (consultants, architects, publishers, builders, farming supplies for example) that depend on the PO for various facilities.

The important thing is to get people writing their letters arguing against closure, and that needs to happen too, before the close of the consultation period!

Save the planet and save some money!

The South Cambs bid for some funding under the Community Renewables LPSA Reward Grant Bid (nice catchy title that) is still progressing and we hope to know by early November if we have been successful. The money will be used to fund installations in villages, including in homes, of alternative methods of low-emissions heating, and other energy saving devices such as photovoltaic panels.

Star FM interviewed me this afternoon on what South Cambs is doing to save the planet! It gave me the chance to plug what the Climate Change Working Group is doing, working with villages.

Earlier this week a housing heating manager from South Cambs gave the sheltered housing residents in Lettice Martin in Whittlesford a session on energy saving. I'd asked him to come because of the concerns people were putting to me having about their heating. He talked through what the council could do in terms of repairing and replacing heaters, and has arranged for all properties to be surveyed to ensure that the insulation standards are as high as possible, and that people are on the best tariffs and with the best value energy suppliers.

Should we have Speedwatch in Whittlesford or Thriplow?

What is it? The police make available training for volunteers and provide the kit, ie a speed detector radar device. The volunteers don't work in an area that they know, to avoid any confrontations, and the police maintain a watching brief. The team use the detection device to monitor speeds, at an agreed venue chosen by the local neighbourhood panel. They keep away from the device, so this isn't like a roadblock, and jot down the numbers of vehicles, and the whole lot is then passed to the police. The police then write to the vehicle owner saying, you've been speeding. If recurrences of speeding occur then the police follow up, but the whole point is less about prosecuting but getting people to slow down.

One could say it is a cheap way for the police to operate traffic operations, using unpaid civvies. But given the limited number of police deployed on this sort of activity, it may be worth a go. We'll decide at the next parish council meeting. The Guildhall corner in Whittlesford would get my vote as a location.